Posts about Construction

DC has created a map that shows where it has issued permits to block sidewalks and bike lanes for construction projects, and soon, the city will begin releasing more detailed data about where vehicle collisions have happened. Both will tell us more about where in the city pedestrians and bicyclists are at risk, which will make it easier to make those areas safer.

A closed sidewalk. Photo by Jacob Mason.

The map went up in August and is updated daily based on public space permits that DDOT issues.

Map from DDOT.

On the map, the green squares are where a utility company has a permit to block the sidewalk or bike lane, and the yellow triangles are where one has applied for a permit. The red triangles represent permits for DDOT contractors to work in the right of way, taking away parking for a temporary span of time. Orange squares mean there's a permit for a block party, purple squares are for mobile cranes, and red squares are for special events.

Jonathan Rogers, a policy analyst who reports to DDOT director Leif Dormsjo, said, "Obviously, DDOT can't be everywhere inspecting work zones, so to the extent residents are checking the public traffic control plan... we can work together make sure developers are keeping the streets and sidewalks safe."

We'll soon know more about car crashes around the District, too

DDOT will also soon begin publishing monthly reports with information about vehicle collisions, including the ward, block or intersection, the type of vehicle involved, the Police Service Area where the crash occured, the number of people killed or injured, and why it happened.

Some of this data, like the date and time of crashes and the geographic X/Y coordinates for the location, is available now in an open format, but it's much more sparse than what's on the way.

"This open data is a matter of transparency," Rogers said. "People have a right to know where traffic injuries and fatalities are occurring in their city. If residents do nothing more than discover the safety trends for their own neighborhood, that is part of good, open governance."

Rogers also points to how the data can be crunched in a variety of ways that DDOT may not have thought of.

"We want to tap into the expertise among the many data scientists out there, the civic hackers, coders, etc. and see what kind of correlations they may discover. Perhaps they can identify locations in need of urgent improvements that DDOT may not have detected."

Before DDOT starts issuing those reports, however, it has to be sure that they do it in a way that doesn't disclose personal information about victims that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) doesn't allow.

"We'll continue to publish the crash and violation data in the open data format in the meantime," said Rogers.

Did you know the vast majority of DC's houses are made of brick? That might not surprise you if you've walked around the city much, but this map confirms it, and shows how common other types of building materials are.

You can click this map for a larger, interactive map of all the houses in DC. Map by Kate Rabinowitz via DMPED.

Kate Rabinowitz of DataLensDC created the interactive map, which shows what materials make up the facades on DC's houses, based on data from the city.

DC has been around for a while, so it makes sense that a lot of our buildings are made of old-school materials like brick. While new construction generally uses cheaper materials, brick was the material of choice for decades, especially in residential areas closer to the core of the city. For a long time, it was the cheapest, most fireproof construction material available, which was especially important in DC at one point.

Looking throughout the entirety of DC, some areas in the northeast and southeast quadrants have a lot of aluminum and vinyl, which are characteristic of newer construction. There are also a fair number of homes in the northwest quadrant that use wood or stucco. But for the most part, we live in a brick city.

Do you notice anything else in the map? Can you offer any more insight as to why we've used the materials we have?

It's a Bike to Work Day miracle! For the last few months, demolition of the old Washington Post building has squeezed people on both bikes and foot into the same narrow space. But as of this morning, there's both a protected bikeway and a sidewalk, meaning there's a safe way for everyone to travel.

A new protected bikeway on 15th Street. Photo by the author.

When Carr Properties started demolishing the old Washington Post building, at 15th and L NW, it was supposed to set up two separate temporary paths along 15th, one to replace the closed sidewalk and one to replace the closed bikeway. What actually went up, however, was just a single narrow chute. While there were signs saying it was only for bikes, people used it for walking because it was the only option on that side of the street.

This morning, though, I noticed both a temporary sidewalk and protected bikeway, with a barrier in between, running on 15th between L and M Streets. And on L, there are sharrows that make it clear that people on bikes can use the full lane—that may not be as nice as the protected bikeway, but it can work on a temporary basis.

Nice work, DDOT! This is great news for people who depend on the city's bike infrastructure to get around. Now, they don't have to deal with a major gap in the network, which people were fearing would last for the estimated construction time of two years.

The city, and the region, still has a ways to go in terms of providing safe paths for everyone when construction comes along. But this development, made possible by a little paint and some bollards that make things clear, is an encouraging sign.

While H Street NE has boomed in recent years, nearby Benning Road has lagged. That's about to change, with at least two big Benning Road redevelopments coming down the pipeline.

The proposal at 17th and Benning. Image from Capital City Real Estate.

Benning Road NE is, for all intents and purposes, an easterly extension of H Street. East of Starburst the name changes, but Benning more or less functions as the same road, streetcar and all. Except that while H Street has undergone a dramatic transformation in recent years, Benning Road has not.

But now it appears the H Street boom is jumping to Benning.

On December 17, developers officially filed plans to build a 180-unit multifamily building at the northeast corner of Benning Road and 17th Street NE, across 17th Street from Hechinger Mall.

It's the first big, H Street-style proposal to see the light of day on Benning Road.

But it's not the only one. Half a block away and across the street, near 16th and Benning, another developer is proposing a 250-unit building. There are no renderings yet, but rumor purports it will be similar to The Maryland at Maryland Avenue and 14th Street NE.

Together, these developments show how the impending Benning Road boom isn't a matter of if, it's a matter of when. Properties along Benning are too enticing, demand for new housing in DC is too ravenous, and the streetcar, for all its faults, is too much of a draw. Benning is about to boom, and it won't be the same.

In the mid 1970s, Metro's first stations were under construction and on track for their 1976 opening day. This historic photo shows Metro Center station while it was under construction, circa 1975.

Metro Center in 1974 or 1975. Photo source unknown.

In the photo, the basic form of the station is in place. The vault is done, the track bed looks good, and the station's lights are on. But there's clearly a lot of work left to do, including most of the finishing touches.

It's an interesting 40-year-old look at one of our region's most important transit hubs.

At first glance, the District's central-city housing boom might seem to be completely benign: as long as new housing is being built, does it matter where it is? But by funneling almost all new residences into central-city high-rises, the District is all but requiring that new housing be built with only the most expensive construction techniques, on the most expensive land. Potential residents need more choices.

Photos by the author.

Where housing is built influences how housing gets built. That, in turn, determines how much new housing will cost and thus, who can afford to live there. Given how the city is building high-rises, it's no wonder that the resulting housing is expensive: these buildings are expensive by their very nature, and far more expensive than what most of the District's new residents can afford.

High-rise buildings are built to last, with solid materials like concrete and steel plus expensive fittings like elevators and sprinklers. All of that heavy-duty construction costs a lot of money—up to twice as much as low-rise buildings, per square foot. Those fittings also cost more to maintain over the long run. And since these buildings aren't built on land that was cheap to begin with, it should be no surprise that high-rise apartments are expensive.

High-rises are too expensive to rent for anything but top dollar

How expensive are central city high-rises? The cost of just materials, labor, design, and appropriately-zoned land for a high-rise building in central DC amounts to over $400 per rentable square foot—and that's before its developer has made a single cent on her investment, much less paid interest to her investors, paid attorneys to get the site zoned correctly, paid for community improvements like transportation or affordable housing, or brought in the gimmicky amenities.

For instance, take a theoretical two-bedroom, 1,100-square foot unit in a newly built high-rise building. The play-an-apartment-developer online game handily provided by New York City's nonprofit Citizens Housing and Planning Council, reprogrammed with DC's considerably lower costs for land, construction, and property taxes, yields a rent of $3,993 for that two-bedroom apartment.

Under HUD's standards for affordability and household size, this theoretical unit could house a three-person household earning $159,720 a year, or 163% of the Area Median Income for three-person households in this region (which is $98,253). Alternately, to make the unit affordable to a "low-income" household that can afford rent of $1,966 a month, the developer would have to lose (or the government would have to pay) over half of the monthly rental cost.

Requiring high-rises also affects the diversity of the new housing that's built. Building fewer but larger apartments in a central-city high-rise divides the building's high costs among fewer units, pushing per-unit prices up even further relative to cheaper low-rise buildings. A typical three-bedroom unit sold in DC this year had 1,336 square feet; the CHPC's calculator indicates such a unit would be affordable only to a four-person household earning more than twice the Area Median Income.

Wages in the region aren't keeping up with rent costs

All of this would be fine if the new jobs that this region is creating were all high-paid, but they're not. A June report by Jeannette Chapman from George Mason University's Center for Regional Analysis forecasts that only 37% of the new households that will settle in the District from 2011 to 2023 will earn middle or high incomes (120% or more of Area Median Income). That leaves 63% of all new households, and 73% of new renter households, earning low or moderate incomes.

Most of DC's new households, then, will be priced out of most of DC's new housing. 30,000 new households of more moderate means, who can't afford fancy new high-rise apartments, will instead have to compete with existing households for existing housing, pushing prices up across the board.

High-rise apartments under construction near the Navy Yard.

The District could step in and provide tremendous subsidies to pay the high rent on high-cost high-rises, which is sort of what inclusionary zoning does on a very small scale. Or it could acknowledge that while luxury high-rises have their place, they cannot meet everyone's housing needs, and that new housing is also needed that's intrinsically more economical—built using less-costly low-rise and mid-rise techniques and on less-expensive land.

Cracks slow construction: Last month construction crews found cracks in the girders that will hold the Silver Line tracks near Dulles Airport. The cracked girders may need to be replaced and could further delay the second phase of the Silver Line. (Post) (Comment)

Housing boom: High demand for new housing in DC is driving a construction boom. More residential construction permits have been issued in DC so far this decade than in any full 10-year decade since at least 1960. (District, Measured) (Comment)

Bridge rebuilding: Repairs to the Memorial Bridge will begin later this month. The National Park Service closed lanes and sidewalk space in May after finding that the bridge's secondary support beams were not meeting load-bearing standards. (Post) (Comment)

Maryland governor Larry Hogan wants to build roads with money saved from cancelling the Baltimore Red Line and cutting back the Purple Line. The governor says the two light rail lines cost too much. But his marquee highway project, a wider Route 404 on the Eastern Shore, looks to be far less cost-effective than either.

Route 404. Photo by Doug Kerr on Flickr.

The Route 404 widening will turn 12 miles of two-lane road between Route 50 and Denton into a four-lane divided highway. The work will cost $204 million: $160 million in new money plus $44 million budgetedearlier.

The governorpresents his road plan as a way to speed traffic. But the travel time savings from widening Route 404 will be far more expensive than the time saved by the two rail lines.

The two-lane road only backs up on summer weekends when people drive to the beach. According to Google maps, the average traffic delay on summer Friday and Sunday afternoons varies from zero to six minutes. By a generous estimate, this adds up to 60,000 hours lost each year in traffic backups, making the construction cost $3,400 per annual hour saved.

Building the Purple Line will cost $288 per annual hour of rider benefits, and the number for the Red Line is $456. The amount of money the state is spending to save a minute of travel time on Route 404 is seven and a half times greater than the amount it refused to spend to save a minute of travel time in Baltimore. That means a Baltimore bus rider will wait an hour so that an auto passenger can get to the beach eight minutes faster.

Highway safety is another goal, but widening 404 may not help much

Eastern Shore officials offer another rationale for widening Route 404. There are many fatal crashes on the road, and they suggest that the planned widening will fix that. But it's unlikely that the death toll will go down significantly.

Using web searches and a memorial website, I found descriptions of 11 fatal crashes on Route 404 since 2010. Seven of them were on the 12-mile section of two-lane highway; four on the 12-mile stretch that is already four lanes.

Of the seven collisions on the two-lane road, onlytwo involved vehicles crossing the center line. Three vehicleswerehit from the side as they turned onto 404 from side roads. There weretwo rear-end collisions. On a four-lane divided highway, center-line crossing would be impossible, but turns would be more difficult. These numbers suggest that widening 404 would only modestly improve safety, if at all.

Also of note: five of the 11 crashes involved tractor-trailers. Requiring through trucks to use US 50, which has far fewer intersections without signals, might have prevented most or all of these.

Moreover, former Maryland highways chief Parker Williams has said that Route 404 isn't an especially dangerous road, which implies that highway safety money could be better spent in other places. For the cost of widening 404, the state could install some 2,000 of the flashing crosswalk lights known as hawk beacons. They would undoubtedly have saved a good number of the 630 pedestrian lives lost on Maryland highways between 2009 and 2014.

The highway projects in Governor Hogan's package have never gotten the sort of detailed assessment of costs and benefits that the Red and Purple Line projects were subject to. The numbers for Route 404 suggest that cancelling the Red Line was not at all the cost-conscious decision the governor presented it as.